1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to shipment management. More specifically, the present invention relates to real-time pricing of shipping vendors.
2. Description of Related Art
There are presently a variety of ways to ship an item. The shipping vendors available to a user may include various well-known national and international vendors, such as FedEx®, United Parcel Service (UPS®), United States postal service (USPS®), and DHL®, as well as various local couriers. The availability of shipping services by shipping vendors may vary from location to location. For example, a local courier may only provide service within a particular city. Further, some shipping vendors may not deliver internationally.
A shipment may also be sent using a variety of shipping options, including declared value, packaging options, recipient acknowledgement, and the like. For example, an item may need to be delivered in a padded envelope by a certain date and acknowledged by recipient signature. The availability of various shipping options may differ from vendor to vendor. For example, a particular vendor may not offer overnight shipping; another vendor may require overnight shipments to be ready for pick-up by a certain time; and another vendor may have size and weight restrictions on overnight shipments. In addition to size and weight, various other packaging specifications (e.g., shape, contents of package, value of contents) may also limit the availability of shipping options.
The variety of available shipment options and shipping vendors allows users to tailor their shipments in a variety of ways. Further, multiple shipping vendors allow for alternatives should a first shipping vendor be unable to ship an item or provide a certain shipping option. However, these multiple options for shipment complicate the decision-making process with regard to which shipping vendor to use and which shipping options to choose.
Cost generally is an important factor in choosing a shipping vendor and shipping options. The cost of shipping an item, however, is highly variable among vendors and may further vary based on the shipping options, article specifications, etc. Many users cannot afford to ship every article for overnight hand delivery with special packaging, insurance, etc. On the other hand, a user may need to ensure that a certain item be delivered by a certain time and acknowledged by the recipient. To choose a shipping vendor and shipping options, therefore, requires that the user determine and compare costs while assessing the benefit provided by the various shipping options available from each shipping vendor.
Presently, determining costs may require a user to separately contact each shipping vendor (e.g., visit websites for each shipping vendor), provide article specifications to each vendor, determine what shipping options are available from each vendor, and gather quotes from each vendor concerning shipments and a variety of shipping specifications. Gathering quotes in such a manner is inefficient and time-consuming, and will provide only limited information since both the rates and availability of each shipping vendor and shipping option are not static. Further, shipping quotes are extremely time-sensitive, i.e., the cost for delivery by a certain date from a particular vendor generally increases as time passes. Certain shipping options may also become unavailable after a certain time.
Another presently available method for pricing shipments among multiple vendors includes consulting rate tables for each shipping vendor. Consulting a rate table may also not provide any useful bases for comparison among vendors, because such rate tables are only valid until rates change. Rates may change weekly based on various factors, including shipping volume. In some systems, new and updated rates tables may need to be uploaded into various systems for processing.
There is, therefore, a need in the art for improved systems and methods for real-time pricing of shipping vendors.